When people (or whoever there) of the distant future write the history of a primitive civilization at the beginning of the 21st century, archeology will be the best way to restore the picture of what was lost. What awaits our archives and museums was clearly demonstrated by the fate of the Alexandria Library.
What will archaeologists be able to say about us in 100 thousand years? Very rare artifacts will be able to avoid destruction and decay. There will almost certainly be nothing left of you, dear reader. About what happened 100 thousand years ago, when the first people of the modern type left Africa, we can only guess from stone tools and several fossil remains.
Your bones, too, most likely will not survive. Fossilization is extremely rare, especially in the world of land animals. But since there are already 7 billion of us, something is sure to turn to stone. And it will make a splash.
Instant fossils are the least common. They form when animals (and people) die in calcium-rich seasonal ponds and marshes or caves. In both cases, there is a chance that the bones will mineralize quickly enough and outperform the decomposition processes, notes paleobiologist Anna Kay Berensmeyer of the National Museum of Natural History (USA). For example, in southern Kenya, a wildebeest bone was found that turned to stone within two years.
They will not look for our remains in cemeteries: bodies buried in this way turn to dust over several centuries. The richest deposits of our bones are likely to be found in volcanic ash or in the sediment that covers the corpses of the Asian tsunamis, says Ms Berensmeyer. Several bodies are mummified in peat bogs or alpine deserts. But if conditions change later, the remains will disappear.
The same fate awaits our homes and artifacts. Coastal cities will flood, buildings will collapse. After several millennia, the concrete will dissolve. But archaeologists of the future will be able to find traces of a clear rectangular shape in the arrangement of sand and gravel - a sure sign that a civilization existed in this place. "Nature does not create anything like this," stresses Jan Zalasevich from the University of Leicester (UK).
The easiest way to find our largest structures - quarries and dams. Alexander Rose, executive director of the American Long Now Foundation, believes that the Hoover Dam and three Chinese dams contain so much concrete that some of it will definitely remain. In addition, some of our creations (for example, the Onkalo nuclear waste storage facility in Olkiluoto, Finland) are specially designed to survive these 100 thousand years.
We have another large-scale construction project - our wonderful landfills. This is where almost all products of human culture end up. As a rule, filled landfills are sealed with an impermeable layer of clay, and the contents are deprived of access to oxygen - the main enemy of conservation. “I think we can say that these places will remain anaerobic for geological time, - said Morton Barlas of North Carolina State University (USA). Even some organic materials, such as natural fabrics and wood, can avoid decomposition under these conditions. True, over the millennia, they will gradually turn into something resembling peat or brown coal, says Jeanne Bonet from the University of Illinois (USA).
Promotional video:
Few materials will remain intact. First of all, it is a stone, but we hardly use it; only some statues will survive (if erosion is avoided). Ceramic tiles and coffee mugs can last forever - just like shards of the earliest human cultures. Iron rusts quickly, but we have titanium, stainless steel and gold. For example, the gold of the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun lay practically unchanged for five thousand years. “Nothing would have happened to it if it had lain for a hundred thousand years,” stresses Mr. Rose. The contents of laptops will rust, but the titanium case will remain - and the archaeologists of the future will restore our modern religion from the image of the apple on the lid.
The most important thing is that we do not know which aspects of our civilization will be of interest to descendants. For example, today we study ancient people, keeping in mind the theory of Darwin: a thing completely unthinkable two hundred years ago. If something from our literature reaches our descendants, it will not be a story about us, but what we, primitive creatures, thought about ourselves.
The fate of our culture will be like polystyrene coffee cups. They are not biodegradable by any known microorganism and can last for millions of years. But they will turn into lumps and scraps of an incomprehensible shape, and the archaeologist will break his head, trying to understand why we needed these strange objects.